


Memento Vivere

by Mortonimo



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Aliens, Charlotte is a good student okay and I love her, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:28:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22605511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mortonimo/pseuds/Mortonimo
Summary: Charlotte is a freshman at Princeton, when a strange creature attack her in an open field. Her professor, a strange man who tells her he goes by The Doctor takes her hand and they start running and they never stop
Relationships: Tenth Doctor/Original Female Character(s)
Kudos: 2





	Memento Vivere

Never in a million years did I think I’d ever travel the stars. Never did I think I’d fall in love with a thousand-year-old timelord, yet I did. I did all of those things and it all started on my first day of university. I had been accepted into a well-renowned school, you might have heard of it. Princeton was a beautiful campus, it was green and luscious towards the end of the summer when classes had started. My first class of the day was The Universe at 8:00 a.m. and I had never been in such a rush. I woke up late, couldn’t find clothes to wear and by the time I found something presentable I had 15 minutes to run to class and ran I did. 

The classroom was already crowded with students, leaving one cushy seat at the front. Still catching my breath I pulled a notebook and a pen out of my bookbag and the professor sauntered in. He was a peculiar looking man. That sounds rude, he was a very good looking man, but he carried himself in a way I've never seen, and it made him seem strange. 

"Alright class, welcome. My name's John Smith, but just call me Dr Smith, and I'll be teaching you uh…" He spoke in a British accent, and looked down at a small paper booklet in his hand, flipping through it, "Oh right! The Universe! Astronomy 101! How exciting!" He grinned.

Dr Smith grabbed some chalk off the ledge of the board and turned with his back facing us. He was very skinny, and it was accentuated by his pinstriped suit, "Right, where to start… I guess we start at the beginning aye? I'm not very good at doing stuff in order, gets boring but let's give it a try."

He rambled a bit longer before asking a question, "How do we know about the big bang? Why is it that t equals zero at this one point in time? Anybody?" He looked around the room, everyone else was looking dead eyed, not really in the mood for talking. I would be just the same if I hadn't just ran for my life to get here and the adrenaline was pumping still and that gave me the courage to raise my hand, "Ah! Yes, running girl, saw you in a hurry to get here before class, small world."

I laughed, "Indeed it is. Nobody really know if the Big Bang was the very beginning of everything, but it's as far back as we can see, we know it happened because the universe is expanding from a singular point. Nothing can be found to prove there was or wasn't a time before the Big Bang happened." 

"Very right! What's your name?" 

"Charlotte Wilson, sir." 

"Lovely. Well as Charlotte said, we, well humans a least, don't know what happened before the Big Bang, but it happened and it happened quickly. It was a rapid expansion of all things, and it allowed for the formation of subatomic particles and other things that now make up everything in the universe." The lecture went on for a while, and was dismissed by 10:30. Dr Smith had assigned us homework, which was to look up at the night sky and write down observations. Easy enough, I had thought. I looked at the night sky every chance I got, so just a normal activity for me with the addition of writing. 

The rest of the day dragged on with classes and eating alone at the cafeteria. I drudged along back to my dorm room, I was lucky enough to get a hold of a single dorm, so I didn't have to worry about roommates or anything like that. I dropped my bag on my bed, dug out my notebook and headed out to a green area of campus where lights wouldn't bother me much.

I laid on the cool grass and watched the stars twinkle and dance with tenacity, "How wonderful," I sighed through a small smile. I laid there for a while, forgetting everything except the large expanse of space. The strongest urge washed over me, I wanted to touch it, to be among the stars and see the beauty of the universe with my own eyes, not through a telescope or a photograph. 

"You're supposed to be writing things down you know." My attention drew away from the stars and over to a lanky man sauntering over to me.

I sat up and got a closer look at the man and realized it was my professor, "What are you doing out so late Dr Smith?"

"Well, I was you know, going on a little stroll. Call me the Doctor by the way, outside of class I don't care for formalities. I was looking for some nice shops. Do you know of any nice shops on campus?"

I laughed a little at his antics, "Well all the nice shops I know of are closed by now, Doctor. Is Doctor still formal?"

"It's complicated." He grinned wider.

"Isn't everything. So Doctor, which part of England are you from?" 

"Uh…" He trailed of thinking for a second, "London area I suppose."

"You suppose? That took an awful lot of thinking, are you sure you're from England?" I grinned back at him. 

"Alright you caught me. I'm not from Earth." The Doctor held up his hands in surrender, "Where are you from Charlotte Wilson?" 

"A small town, down south a bit and over the river."

"What's this small down called?" 

"Warminster, probably never even heard of it," I shrugged.

"I have."

"When?" 

"Just now," The Doctor smiled at me.

I rolled my eyes at mine, "You're strange, and I guess that proves your point. You're an alien." I giggled.

"That's a good thing through, being strange. Makes you stand out." 

A noise came from the woods a ways from the two of us, the Doctor tensed up and whipped his head in the direction the sound came, "What was that?"

"Don't worry it was probably at most a coyote. Nothing more dangerous than that lived around here, unless you believe in folktales." 

"What folktales?" The Doctor eyed me curiously.

"Have you ever heard of the Jersey Devil? He's a huge deal around here, most people have a story of a weird occurrence." More rustling, and what sound like footsteps cake from the woods, sending a chill down my back, "Now I gave myself a bad feeling." 

"You good at running Charlotte?"

"Only when I absolutely need to." A tall figure with horns emerged from the treeline, it's legs were impossible skinny, almost like goat or horse legs.

"Well now's the Time. Run!" He grabbed my hand and we ran, just as I had this morning. This time I was worried for my life. The thing running after us was huge, taller than a grown man and I heard it  _ fly.  _

Just as the creature was getting dangerously close to us, the Doctor opened the door to a Police box. A British Police box, in the middle of an American campus. I was going to question it but I was tugged into it. I leaned against the door catching my breath, "Oh my God. I almost died. What was that thing?" 

I was so caught up in thought, that I didn't notice the huge room I had entered until I lifted my head, "Oh my God! What? It's…" I poked my head out the door again, and surely enough it was, "Bigger on the inside." I looked over at the Doctor to see him grinning wider than a football field. 

"It's called a TARDIS, stand for Time and Relative Dimensions in Space." I wondered further to the center of the circular room, the walls were covered with bubble like things and in the center of it all was a console. A long tube that glowed blue shoot up from the middle.

I put my hand down on the cool metal, and I felt something, like a pulse, "She's alive, isn't she?" A bum resonated through the room.

"That's a new one," The Doctor mumbled to himself, "Yes she's alive. She's my spaceship and time machine."

"You're a real alien then. You weren't joking?" I spun around, bracing myself on the console.

"No I wasn't. I'm a Timelord. I'm 900 years old and I have two hearts." 

"Must have high blood pressure then?" I joked.

"You have no idea, through the running around helps." 

"So that thing—that creature—was that an alien too?" I racked my brain around what I saw.

"Let's find out shall we Charlotte?" He turned to a monitor that hung off the console, "What do you remember seeing?" 

"Uh, well, it had horns," The Doctor hummed, typing something into the computer, "It was tall, at least seven feet tall and it flew so it must've had wings." Something in my head clicked, "Oh!"

"What? What is it?" The Doctor turned away from the monitor and walked up to me. 

"You know that folktale I told you about earlier?"

"The Jersey Devil? Yeah what about- oh!" His faced scrunched up, "Really? You think it could be that?" 

"It looked like it Doctor, all the stories about it. A giant flying goat thing. It was the thirteenth child of mother who was in so much pain she said it was going to be a devil." 

"Oh that's interesting." He whirled around to his monitor, typing like a madman, "I found it!" He spun the monitor so I could see, and lo and behold it was what everyone thought the Jersey Devil looked like, "A Glodoodaa, reproduces by artificially inseminating a host whose hips are wide enough to birth. How do you take care of this problem then?"

"We're not going to kill it are we? It didn't ask to be born, it's like a tiger you know-"

"Of course not, I'm going to do everything in my power to find a peaceful solution." 

"What if we trap it in like a net of sort and we use the TARDIS to take it to its home planet, so it won't be alone?" 

He gave me a curious look, "That could work, but we'd need a net strong enough to hold it." 

"The Engineering Department! They have to have steel wires, or something that strong, we could weave the wires together and make the net ourselves."

"You're brilliant! Absolutely brilliant! Come on then, don't have time to waste." He sprinted out the door and I followed close behind. We found ourselves at the Department building, and the Doctor pulled out a long silver pen-like glowy thing to open the doors.

"What was that thing?"

"My Sonic screwdriver, I'll explain later!" He pulled me along with him through the hallways, stopping to read the plaques that told us where to go. We made it to the supply room and surely enough there were steel looking wires.

"Do you know how to make a net?" The Doctor looked at me as he pulled out yards of wire.

"No clue, but we'll try our best." We started weaving together the wires, which was a challenge.

"So what major are you in Charlotte?"

"Astrophysics, love it. I always loved space, my dad owned a huge telescope and we would go to empty fields, far away from light pollution and just point it at anything we wanted to. Always wanted to be among the stars, to see the beauty of science right in front of me, it's a silly dream." I rambled on, not paying attention to what I was saying, just letting myself speak so I could focus on weaving. 

"Doesn't sound so silly to me, it's a lovely dream." We stayed in silence until the crude net was made, "We've got ourselves an alien to catch." 

We made our way to the same clearing, with a plan, the Doctor had landed the TARDIS in the middle of the field and had me stand out in the open making as much noise as possible trying to catch the Glodoodaa's attention. It worked great, the alien flew its way over to me and just as it was about to grab me, the Doctor appeared from behind the blue box and slung the net over the beast, bringing it to the ground, "Aha! Gotcha!" The Doctor grinned, tying the net to make sure it couldn't get free. It thrashed around and let out some noises like any déstresser animal.

"It's alright, I know it's scary, but we're helping you. We're gonna take you back home," I said to the Glodoodaa as we drug it into the TARDIS. I felt bad for the alien really, this wasn't exactly dignifying. The Doctor danced around the console, pulling levers, pushing buttons and turning on a toaster? Whatever he was doing caused the machine to shake and throw me to the ground. I gained stability by holding onto a nearby railing, just in time for the TARDIS to still. 

"Right, here we go," The Doctor dragged the alien back out the doors and onto a terrain that I only got a glimpse of, and it was red and desert-like, that's when it hit me. This was a real space machine, not sure about the time bit yet but I would believe right about now. 

The Doctor came back in to ship, and laughed, "What nice adventure! Everything went right, that's brilliant! You did a good job Charlotte, big help. Tell you what," 

"What?"

"How would you fancy a trip, as a way to say thanks. Anywhere, anywhen you'd like, you're pick, my treat. What do you say?"

My answer was obvious, "That sounds lovely! I've got a question through."

"Shoot, I love questions."

"Do I still have to do the homework?"


End file.
